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Prostitution of children (or child
prostitution) is a form of commercial sexual
exploitation of children in which a child performs the services
of prostitution, most often for the
financial benefit of an adult. The term is widely used to describe
prostitution of prepubescent or pubescent children, however In
legal definitions, the term usually refers to prostitution by a
minor, or person under the local age of
majority. The form of child prostitution in which adults travel to
foreign countries for the purposes of avoiding local laws is known
as child sex tourism.

Most generally, the prostitution of children means that a party
other than the child benefits from a commercial transaction in
which the child is made available for sexual purposes—either an
exploiter intermediary (pimp) who controls or
oversees the child’s activities for profit, or a child abuser who negotiates an exchange directly
with a child in order to receive sexual gratification. The
provision of children for sexual purposes may also be a medium of
exchange between adults.

It was the limitations of the term child prostitution that
led to the development in the mid-1990s of the term commercial
sexual exploitation of children, or CVE,as a more encompassing
description of specific forms of sexual trade involving children.
Nevertheless, ‘child prostitution’ remains in common usage and is
indeed the wording embedded in international instruments of
law.

Causes and context

Children are often forced by social structures and individual
agents into situations in which adults take advantage of their
vulnerability and sexually exploit and abuse them. Structure and agency commonly combine
to force a child into commercial sex: for example, the prostitution
of a child frequently follows from prior sexual abuse, often in the
child's home.

Child prostitution usually takes place in particular environments,
such as brothels, bars and clubs, or homes, or particular streets
and areas (usually in socially run down places). Sometimes it is
not organized, but often it is, either on a small scale through
individual pimps or on a larger scale through extensive criminal
networks. See organized crime.

Children also engage in prostitution, however, when they exchange
sex outside these environments and in return not only for basic
needs such as accommodation, food, clothing, or safety, but also
for extra pocket money for desired consumer goods otherwise out of
their reach. There is a subculture of "pocket money prostitution"
in many consumer societies, whereby girls and boys under 18 rent
out their sexual services for cash or expensive gifts, or to save
up for cars, motorcycles, even college tuition. In Japan it's
called Enjo kosai "sponsored dating",
American/Canadian high schools are not exempt from this
phenomenon.

These teenagers are prostituted in conditions that appear otherwise
perfectly normal. Enjo kosai, the
pay-dating practice reported in Japan, is considered a prime
example of this. However, this latter practice is by definition
voluntary rather than via manipulation.

Living and working conditions for children that are prostituted are
frequently substandard. Such children are commonly poorly paid or
unpaid, kept in unsanitary conditions, denied access to proper
medical care, and constantly watched and kept subservient through
threat of force. These threats may be physical or psychological in
nature.

While some sex tourists may use children
involved in prostitution, it has been argued that the majority of
their 'clients' are instead the locals. Quoting from the back cover
of a recent work:

The Asian sex trade is often assumed to cater
predominantly to foreigners.

Sex Slaves turns that belief on its head to
show that while western sex tourists have played a vital part in
the growth of the industry, the primary customers of Asia's
indentured sex workers and of its child prostitutes are
overwhelmingly Asian men.

Prohibition

While the legality of adult prostitution varies between different parts of
the world, the prostitution of minors is
illegal in most countries. Furthermore, many countries whose citizens
most frequently engage in international child procurement, such as
the United
States, Australia and European countries, enforce
worldwide jurisdiction on their nationals traveling
abroad.

As previously mentioned, some literature refers to prostitutes
between 13 to 17 years of age as 'teenage prostitutes,' but the
most common definition of a 'child' is a person who is under the
age of 18. The latter definition is used by the ILO's Worst Forms of Child
Labour Convention, discussed above. Therefore prostitution
of children usually assumed to refer to the prostitution of
persons under 18.

The laws of some countries do, however, distinguish between
teenage prostitutes and the prostitution of younger
children. For example, the Thai government defines a teenage
prostitute as being between 15 and 18 years old, while the Japanese
government defines one as being between 13 and 18. The basis for
making this distinction may be that older children are considered
legally able to consent to sex, while sex with younger children is
automatically rendered unlawful as statutory rape. However, the definitions of
teenage prostitution in some countries do not correlate to
the relevant age of consent laws.
In the
People's
Republic of China, all forms of prostitution are illegal, but having
sexual contact with anyone under the age of 14, regardless of
consent, will be charged with a more serious crime than raping an
adult.

Extent

Asia

In
Cambodia, it has been
estimated that about a third of all prostitutes are under 18
.

The exact
number of child-prostitutes in Thailand is not
known, but Thailand’s Health System Research Institute reports that
children in prostitution make up 40% of prostitutes in Thailand
.

In
India, the federal police say thataround 1.2
million children are believed to be involved in prostitution . A
CBI statement said that studies and surveys sponsored by the
ministry of women and child development estimated that about 40% of
all India's prostitutes are children.

In
Indonesia, UNICEF estimates that 30% of the female
prostitutes are below 18 .

In the
Philippines, there are 60,000 to 100,000 prostituted children,
according to UNICEF and non-governmental organisations
.

In
Sri
Lanka, there are nearly 40,000 child prostitutes,
according to UNICEF and ILO .

In
Nepal, according to research conducted by the
International Labour Organization (ILO) on440 prostitutes from
Kathmandu, approximately 30% of them were found to be
children .

In
Bangladesh, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated in 2004
that there were 10,000 underage girls used in commercial sexual
exploitation in the country, but other estimates placed the figure
as high as 29,000.

There are
estimated to be at least 70,000 prostitutes in Vietnam, and 20,000 of these are children .

South America

In
Colombia, it is estimated that there are 35,000 prostituted
children, with between 5,000 and 10,000 of them on the streets of
Bogotá.

In 2003,
the Government of Chile estimated
that there were approximately 3,700 children involved in some form
of commercial sexual exploitation; in 1999 UNICEF put the number of
child prostitutes much higher,
estimating that there were approximately 10,000 children between
the ages of 6 and 18 involved in prostitution .

In
Ecuador, a 2002 International Labor Organization report
estimated that 5,200 minors were engaged in
prostitution.

Brazil is
considered to have the worst child sex trafficking record after
Thailand. According to the Protection Project report,
various official sources agree that from 250,000 to 500,000
children live as child prostitutes, but other sources in Brazil put
the number at up to 2,000,000 children .

North America

In 2001,
Dr. Richard Estes and Dr. Neil Alan Weiner estimated that in the
U.S., 162,000 U.S. homeless youth are victims of
commercial sexual exploitation (CVE) and that 57,800 children in
homes (including public housing) are estimated to be victims of
CVE. They also estimated that 30% of shelter youth and 70%
of homeless youth are victims of CVE in the United States. One
third of street-level prostitutes in the U.S. are under 18 years
old while fifty percent of off-street prostitutes are less than 18
years old. Off-street prostitution includes massage parlors, strip
clubs, and escort services. According to Estes and Weiner, 12 to 14
is the average age of entry into prostitution for girls under 17
years old in the United States while the average age of entry into
prostitution is between 11 and 13.

A study
by Unicef Mexico and the
DIF/National System for Integral Family Development estimated that
more than 16,000 children in Mexico were involved in prostitution
(in June 2000);a 2004 study by researcher Elena Azaola
estimated that some 17,000 children under the age of 18 are victims
of the sex trade in Mexico;the State System of Integral Family
Development (DIF) reported that more than 20,000 minors were
victims of child prostitution in Mexico in 2005, an increase since
the year 2000.Out of Mexico City’s 13,000 street
children, 95% have already had at least one sexual encounter
with an adult (many of them through prostitution).

In
El
Salvador, an NGO
study in 1998 indicated that at least 44 % of the estimated 1,300
prostitutes in 3 major red light districts of San Salvador were between the ages of 13 and 18 .Among
all prostitutes of the country, between 10 and 25 percent of
visible prostitutes are minors, and an estimated 40 percent of the
hidden prostitutes who cater to upper-class clients are believed to
be minors, according to a UNICEF study released in 2000

In
Nicaragua, according to Casa Alianza, in the brothels of
Managua there are between 1,200 and 1,500 prostituted girls
and young women, and almost half of them are under the age of 18
. Every night, hundreds of teenage girls line the Masaya
Highway commercial corridor on the capital's south side. Street children engage in prostitution,
often to support a drug habbit.

Europe

In
Ukraine, research has shown that between 30 and 40 percent
of prostitutes are between 11 and 18 years

A 2006
report by World Vision Middle
East/Eastern Europe funded by the Canadian government and supported
by six United Nations agencies and
the International
Organization for Migration reported that the sexual
exploitation of children, child trafficking and sexual violence
towards minors is increasing and that Russia is becoming
a new destination for child sex tourism.The report adds that
some studies claim approximately 20 to 25 percent of Moscow's sex
workers are minors.

Oceania

In Australia, there are an estimated 4000
children involved in prostitution, according to a study by Child
Wise, the Australian arm of the global End Child Prostitution
Pornography And Trafficking group.

ECPATNew
Zealand and Stop Demand Foundation have cited in a report,
“The Nature and Extent of the Sex Industry in New Zealand,” a
police survey of the New
Zealand sex industry, which showed that 210 children under
the age of 18 years were identified as selling sex, with
three-quarters being concentrated in one Police
District.